TV Output ?

[q_armando]

Hi,
I am currently playing N64 games trough emulation,even though I still own the original system and many original games for it.
The reason is because the emulator is capable of a higher resolution and also in some games it's convenient to save the state.
Plus I am used to sit in front of the computer for hours!!
But sometime I like to play from my couch, and since my video card has an s-video output, I can play everyting on my telly, reguardless if it's an emulator or a PC game or just a movie.
Now I have a few thoughts to share on this point.
You are free to disagree or not, but your opinion is what I am looking for in this post.

- When I play N64 games trough the television ( with pj64 ) I didable high quality texture and 2x or what ever is there to make 2d graphics smoother, because I suppose on a TV set you can barely see the difference and they might actually look better without.

- I also disable screen anti-aliasing and v-sync and other high quality settings and set the full screen resolution to 800x600 60 hertz.

I can still see the video if I use a higher resolution(1024x768 for example) but I think that above a certain range I won't notice the difference anyway.

At this point I would like to know what's the best resolution to be viewed on a television.
I tried several ones, and I must say ,above 640x480 I don't see any difference.
I think my TV resolution is close to 640x480(it's not HDTV,but a sony triniton), but I don't want to start any war about pixels and inexistant screen resolutions , I just would like to know if it's a good Idea to disable all those filters and keep a low resolution(because it's not noticable on a tv screen anyway and with this settings I am sure that performance should get slightly better) or if I will be missing something.

Am I right ? Does anybody else play trough television ? Over all , what kind of settings do you suggest ? My system is capable of running an N64 emulator with most high quality option enabled and still almost every supported game plays well,therefore it's not a question about performing problems, I would just like to get the best possible settings for the task.

Reguards

 

[Smiff]

i use
848x480 32bit 59.94 HZ NTSC Widescreen TV with RGB connection and NTSC games (480 visible lines is correct)
triple buffer vsync, highest available FSAA and Aniso filtering (no texture "enhancement" effects rubbish and pretty much don't touch anything else)

but i have a new ver of jabo's plugin with proper aspect controls, you cant do this so well in any public ver, but on a 4:3 TV that's not so necessary anyway, just use 640x480.

your settings sound ok, the main way you can get better quality is to not use s-video tv out, but build a dedicated htpc for tv use and program the display adapter for real NTSC output (with Powerstrip) as the primary device, which is what ive done but its serious work and means the PC cant probably be used for normal computing tasks you also (using tv-out) have be careful what kind of processing your video card is doing to the tv out, probably want to disable any flicker filters etc and check the levels.

 

[q_armando]

Thanks,
sounds interesting. My Geforce 6800 GT claims to have a 'native' dual view mode which can output simultaniously to the tv and vga monitor without performance loss. It's decent enough,even though I am not a fan of s-video output, when I was in Europe I was always trilled by RGB,but in the USA it's a bit different, and my TV doesn't even have a component video connector,which is ment for HDTV anyway.
But I must confess i don't know what's a 'dedicated htpc for tv '.Sounds good, maybe could it improve the video quality even when I watch a movie ? I am just curious, I don't remember what htpc stands for.
And why do you enable di aniso filtering and triple buffer v-sync ? I heard somewhere that you don't need those if you are using a tv.
Anyway thanks for the info.
Cheers

 

[Smiff]

ok you can't really get good quality taking pictures of TV but... thing in the middle with blue light is HTPC, cheaper than it looks, just a Sempron 2600+ low voltage CPU / 512MB RAM PC running GameEX as frontend. Radeon 9550 is driving TV as primary monitor (using PAL for DVDs) using custom built cable (was difficult) and yes the movie quality is excellent thats mainly why did it this way, beats the hell out of my old Matrox G400 DVDmax with s-video.

how you'd get a component signal for a US TV i'm not sure. other reason it looks so good for games and video (and so bad for windows desktop - do all maintainence over VNC) is the graphics card thinks its driving a monitor and there's no filtering or anti-flicker - good tv out might let you disable that aswell but its unlikely to be as good.

main point i was making anyway was use 480 visible lines resolution for NTSC content (thats exactly double standard N64 res of 320x240) and lots of FSAA (looks good for low res) and anisotropic filtering also looks good (although interlacing slightly spoils the effect so get a progressive scan TV if you can afford it!). triple buffering is to avoid tearing and can be smoother but if it causes lag don't use it.

edit: ok here's it running Mario64 for "proof" and some idea of quality, moire is a camera effect of course looks a lot better real (note for anyone who fancies this setup: spent much more time setting it up than i'll ever play on it)

 

[q_armando]

Wahoo..
If I well understand this HTPC is like one of those PC in a box that one can hook up to the television set with a wireless keyboard and mouse to basically browse Internet ?
But yours is more powerfull and you use it as a multi-console-system (all in one box,operated with a front end) to handle all your gaming needs!
Then you added a custom made cable and custom resolution(with power strip)to get a perfect output without wasting any computer resource(why overload the memory usage and the video card chips if you only need 640x480?).
This is brilliant,an ideal set-up for an emulation dedicated system.
But what about your " complicated custom made cable" ?How did you pull it toghether and how really complicated is ? I assume your television has a scart/rgb input in the back( I don't know if you live in the States or Europe), which is the only way to go since it has so many signals available.
I read that a modern scart can manage several different kinds of signals(RGB included) and even set the TV in the right mode to suit the source of the signal. Unfortunally in the States we mostly get only S-Video, composite or component(3 ways) signals.But the component is only available on HDTV,and it's the only one that can really compete with RGB.
As I said before I only have S-video,and I don't think i could get a better image than that on my TV. But it would be interesting to see what kind of connection did you establilished with you set-up.
Anyway you gave me a couple of good Ideas to experiment with this week,and it's very funny what you said about spending more time to fix your system than you actually play the games, because it's exacly what happens to me, I find it very challaging to get things working and as smooth as possible,and I even spend many nights working on it, but when everything is fine I don't have the energy nor the time to play the games!!
Many thanks

 

[Smiff]

just found out the Radeon does have some YPrPb adapter, which is probalby what youd need in the US. Radeon was necessary for me because it has composite sync, without that you need to build a sync combiner(?) which is much more complicated.
the cable i made was just errr.. using these instructions
http://ryoandr.free.fr/english.html
it's only hard if you're not very good at soldering quite small stuff. and because i used a very cheap SCART cable.
and lots of discussion here
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136811

 

[q_armando]

Well thanks for the links,very useful stuff indeed,it remind's me of the good old days when I was building my own scart/rgb cables for my 'not very supported 'at the time home computer ZX Spectrum.
How many memories, but I do remember that I was pretty good at it, and successfully builded a few ones.
A totally different story anyway.But thanks again !!!

 

[redmistpete]

TV sets use scanlines which are not present in most emulation. When viewing N^4 emu's through a TV, your actually viewing it ad the designers intended. I run my entire PC through my TV and have a PAL res of 800 x 600. I increased the DPI setting slightly to display text larger and set anti-flicker levels to suit. I must admit that I can see a vast difference in quality in upping the emu res past 800 x 600 as I can when running PC games but I would stick to PAL 640 x 400 for games and 800 x 600 for desktop work as you can fit more on the screen. I realise you are running an NTSC system but this might be helpful for PAL users.

 

[Allnatural]

Stop digging up old threads please.